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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23231494">no direction but its own bright grace</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/pseuds/Northland'>Northland</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Labyrinth (1986)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Post-Canon, Spring, Water Spirit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 12:33:43</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,726</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23231494</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/pseuds/Northland</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“The crows said you could help me.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Worldbuilding Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>no direction but its own bright grace</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenett/gifts">Jenett</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>In summer, the grassy slope beside the stream and the stone bridge crossing over it was a popular place for students from Felham College to hang out. The theatre kids could blow dramatic smoke rings, the rich ones going to Mexico for spring break could start their tans early, and the jocks could play frisbee or hackysack. </p><p>Sarah liked it all year round, even on a day like today, which was only technically spring by the date on the calendar. The centre of the stream ran freely, but panes of ice still glazed its edges, and the banks were a mess of grainy, half-melted snow and slush. She picked up a limp cardboard coffee cup left exposed as the snow receded and dropped it in the garbage can at one end of the bridge. </p><p>Her classes were over for the day and she could have gone straight home to eat lunch, but Toby was a boisterous three year old now, and it was nice to have peace and quiet for a little while longer. If she waited until he went down for his nap, then she’d see him afterward when he was less cranky. </p><p>Boosting herself up on the stone coping, she swung her legs over the side to dangle over the water as she dug through her backpack for her only slightly squashed lunch. She took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich and closed her eyes as she chewed, the better to feel the feeble warmth of the sun on her face and try to convince herself that spring would be here soon. </p><p>When she opened her eyes she caught a glimpse of something darting under the bridge—something pale and sleek, not furred, and definitely un-animal like in the way it moved. Sarah craned her head, leaning forward gingerly for a closer look.</p><p>Whatever it was, it was well hidden; mostly Sarah just had an impression of eyes watching from the fringes of a thick stand of dry brown cattails under the bridge. She didn’t look at it directly, but made a subtle movement with the hand holding her tuna salad sandwich. The cattails shook as something in there darted forward, tempted, before jerking backward into the shelter of the reeds.</p><p>Sarah tore a corner of the sandwich off and glanced around before flicking it away from her fingers, down to the stream bank, a few feet away from the cattails. </p><p>A pale body streaked with mud emerged from the stand of reeds and sidled closer to the scrap of food. A head turned sideways with one eye fixed on the sandwich as the other scanned the stream, and her long thin arm snaked out to snatch the scrap of food. </p><p>“Her”? Sarah wasn’t sure where that impression came from. But something about the half-glimpsed face seemed female to her, or maybe she was just influenced by all the water creatures she’d heard of—naiads, mermaids, and what have you.</p><p>Prize acquired, the water girl (or person) had retreated into a nearby clump of bare scrub willow. Her pale, greenish skin and dark hair blended with the striped shadows of the branches and the piebald patches of snow and mud, until she was almost invisible except for the flicker of her tongue as she licked tuna salad off her bony fingers. </p><p>Sarah must have moved or made a noise—she looked up and the two of them were staring straight at each other. Sarah’s breath caught at the sight of pearly, inhuman eyes, lacking any pupil. She thought about greeting the water girl, or waving, but wasn’t sure whether either her speech or her gesture would be understood. </p><p>Instead, she tossed the other half of her sandwich down. </p><p>The girl immediately retreated into a thicker patch of scrub; the branches shook with delight and a small, stifled screech of triumph. A quiet splash drifted up from the water and a ripple moved upstream, against the current. Sarah strained her eyes, but couldn’t see any further sign of the girl. </p><p>That was new, and kind of cool. She’d have to ask her Labyrinth friends if they knew of any people like that who lived in the water.</p><p>Sarah hopped down off the edge of the bridge, hoisting her backpack and grinning ruefully at herself. Looked like she’d be eating lunch with Toby after all.</p><p> </p><p>After a messy meal of macaroni and cheese with an overexcited Toby, Sarah ran up to her room to get ready for her afternoon shift at the local diner. She tugged the scratchy polyester polo shirt over her head and dragged her long hair into a high ponytail. Her stepmother kept asking if she wouldn’t like a cute, short little bob, but Sarah stubbornly held on to her long hair. Even she had to admit it was a pain when waitressing, though.</p><p>Sarah was a terrible waitress. She was polite and deft enough—she could balance sufficient plates and pour coffee without spilling it—but she was absent-minded. Tables in her section either waited half an hour for an omelette, or she hovered around your table refilling your water glasses after every sip. She knew that anywhere else she’d never have gotten the job, but in this small town and this small café, the job pool was pretty tiny. The owners still gave her the slowest shifts, when there were hardly any customers, though.</p><p>She wrapped her long, striped scarf around her neck, tugging it up high and pulling her ponytail out of the loop. Before pulling her door open, she kissed her fingers and touched them to the mirror on the back of her door—her way of saying goodbye to her friends from the Labyrinth, even when they weren’t there.</p><p>And then she spun around and went back, because she’d forgotten something. Pushing the window open, she dug into her coat pocket and carefully set out a new assortment of tokens on the windowsill: a couple of bottle caps, a brass button, and the shiny aluminum tab from a Diet Coke can. The crows—or were they ravens? Sarah wasn’t an ornithologist—liked to come by to pick over the shiny objects she found for them, and Sarah liked to make friends with any creatures she could. She figured they’d probably be a good early warning system for owls, too.</p><p> </p><p>By late afternoon, Sarah was drowsing over her third cup of coffee, leaning on the counter and trying to read her Art History textbook without her forehead toppling on to its blurry pages. There was exactly one customer in the diner: George, who always came in for a piece of blueberry pie after his shift driving the school bus was over.</p><p>The bell over the door jangled and Sarah looked up. The new customer had jumped to one side and was staring up at the bell. They were bundled up in a dirty blue parka with the hood pulled up—a winter coat too heavy even for this chilly weather—but their legs were bare. Sarah stared: were those flip-flops on their feet? And what was wrong with their toes? They skittered toward the counter and perched on the stool directly across from Sarah like a bird, barely touching the seat.</p><p>Sarah leaned back, startled. A bony hand emerged from below the counter and set down the brass button she’d put on her windowsill that morning. It gave a faint, solid clink as it hit the Formica. </p><p>“The crows said you could help me.” The voice was soft, whispery, with an undercurrent of lilting accent Sarah couldn’t place. The hood lifted slightly, and the face peering out of it was the water girl’s. </p><p>Sarah held in a gasp. She leaned closer, peering under the hood. “What… what do you need help with?” she whispered, glancing at George. He was nodding over his coffee, oblivious.</p><p>The girl pushed back the hood and stared at Sarah. Her face was flat and pale, those pearl eyes huge over a small nose and mouth. Her hair was lank and dark with mossy green undertones, resembling strands of weed more than anything, but it also moved slightly, drifting when she turned her head as if it were caught in an invisible underwater current.</p><p>“I need to leave this world and go to another. When our paths crossed this morning, I knew that you could see me, and I thought it must mean something. Then I asked the geese, who said to ask the crows, who said that you were the girl who knew how to find another place.”</p><p>Sarah shook her head, trying to take it all in. “Why? I mean, why do you need to leave?”</p><p>“I swam too far upstream and slept for a long, long time. When I woke, I found the water here too foul.” She grimaced. “Even in spring, when it runs high, there is bitter poison in it. If I stay for another freeze and thaw, I will wither into dust.” And she did look drawn, with hollows under her cheeks and dark circles under her sunken eyes. </p><p>If it was water she needed… Sarah bolted for the tap, poured a glass of clear water, and set it in front of her. “Try this.”</p><p>The girl picked it up, sniffed at it suspiciously, and made a face. But she still extended her tongue, flickering it out to taste a drop. Sarah caught a glimpse of sharp, needle-pointed teeth and shivered. </p><p>“Faugh!” The girl slammed the glass down and spat on the counter. “This water is dead.”</p><p>Oh, right—Sarah should’ve thought of that. Filtration and chlorine probably weren’t what a water creature needed, any more than pollution. Disappointment washed over her. She’d always hoped that there was some magic remaining in her world, even if she never saw it the way she had in the Labyrinth. It was disheartening to realize that the stream she passed over every day had no animating spirit, no other-than-human people living there.</p><p>The girl must have read the expression on her face. “Oh, there are still water spirits here,” she said. “But they do not have eyes and limbs, as I do; they are of the water, part of it, and can live in it no matter what it is like. I need different things.”</p><p>“So you want to go to the… the place I know of?” Sarah examined the girl. She hadn’t seen any water people in the Labyrinth, but that didn’t mean they weren’t there. “I don’t know about the water there. I mean, I imagine it’s better than here, but all I saw was the Bog of Eternal Stench. You wouldn’t want to live there, trust me.”</p><p>“A bog?” The girl brightened, her opalescent eyes widening. “I love bogs!”</p><p>“Not this one, you wouldn’t,” Sarah said dryly. But she thought back to her travels through the wood; she remembered small streams trickling beside the path, and there was the ford Sir Didymus had been guarding as well. “I think you could find somewhere to your liking, though.”</p><p>“Will you take me there, then?” The girl leaned forward, her teeth suddenly intimidatingly close to Sarah’s fingers on the counter. Her eyes gleamed. “I can pay you.”</p><p>If there was one thing the Labyrinth had taught Sarah Williams, it was the power of words. Once she’d seen how the things you said could shape reality, she didn’t speak lightly. So Sarah paused to think hard, dredging up the old way of speech before she replied.</p><p>“If I may help you, I will do so gladly, with no thought of recompense,” she said, slowly and clearly, spreading her open hands before her. “But if you wish to freely give me a token of your gratitude, I will accept.”</p><p>The girl smiled, with a sly look in her eyes. “You are wise. For your help, I will grant you a boon.” She raised a hand to one ear and unfastened an earring that Sarah hadn’t seen before, hidden under the plastered strands of her wet hair. She put it into Sarah’s hand: it was a freshwater pearl the size of a marble, irregular and lumpy with a pinkish sheen to it, threaded on a gold wire. “As long as you carry this, you shall not drown, nor will the waters ever rise over your house.”</p><p>“That is a noble gift,” Sarah told her, the cadence of the Labyrinth already coming easier to her tongue. </p><p>The girl nodded solemnly. “More than you know. But if you can do what the crows claimed, I shall still be in your debt.”</p><p>Sarah grimaced. She hadn’t, of course, repeated the incantation since the night she’d wished her little brother away. But she was positive it would still work—well, almost positive. “We’ll see.” She looked over at George and saw that he’d woken up and was staring perplexed at the two of them. “But for now, you should go. I’ll meet you by the bridge at sunset.” That was close enough to the end of her shift.</p><p>The girl tugged the hood of her sodden parka up and darted out with another harsh jangle of the bell. </p><p>Sarah blinked and shook her head. She picked up the coffee pot and went to refill George’s cup, wondering if she’d dozed over her textbook and it had all been a daydream.</p><p>Well, she’d find out on the way home.</p><p> </p><p>“It is that simple?” the girl repeated sceptically. “You merely wish for them to take me away?”</p><p>“Yeah.” Sarah shrugged. “Or you can ask them yourself, I suppose. I never tried it, but it should work just as well.”</p><p>“No,” the girl said shortly. “If you are the one who called them before, then you should ask.”</p><p>“Okay.” Sarah rubbed her hands together in their thin knit gloves, blowing out a nervous breath that was visible as a thin trail of fog. It was colder now, as the weak March sun disappeared. Ice crackled under her boots as she shifted her weight from one foot to another. Now, suddenly, when she didn’t have time to go home and see if he were there, she wished she’d thought to ask Hoggle whether it would work. “I should probably know your name, just in case.” </p><p>The water girl frowned, her features turning feral and untrusting. </p><p>“I swear to use it for no purpose but this summoning,” Sarah said, holding up one hand in a gesture of promise.</p><p>The girl leaned forward and whispered in Sarah’s ear, her breath briny and damp: “Eiluren.”</p><p>“Here goes nothing,” Sarah muttered. She took a deep breath, looked at the rising moon, and said clearly, “I wish the goblins would come and take Eiluren away.”</p><p>The wind picked up, and a high-pitched giggle tore by her, too quickly for Sarah to see the movement. The water girl's head jerked up as she followed the sound. She glanced back over her shoulder and her mouth formed the word “Farewell!” Sarah raised a hand in a small wave.</p><p>Then a cloud rushed over the moon, and she was gone.</p><p> </p><p>Sarah walked home slowly, listening to the purl of snowmelt in the gutters and the slop of her boots through the grainy melting snow. She wondered if she’d see Eiluren again; she’d have to ask Hoggle if he could find out how she'd settled in. </p><p>A crow let out a hoarse call and fluttered down from the lowest branch of an oak a few feet ahead of her. It hopped along the sidewalk, crooking its head sideways to regard her out of one oilslick black eye. </p><p>Sarah stopped short. “Hello,” she said, after a quick glance around to ensure none of her neighbours would catch her talking to a bird. “Um, if I can ask a favour? Please be careful who you give my name out to. I mean, this time worked out okay, but I don’t want vampires knocking on my window or anything like that.”</p><p>The bird looked at her, the tilt of its head clearly conveying that she was an idiot. </p><p>“Right. I’m sure you know that.” Sarah felt a little foolish; but still, it paid to have these things spelled out. The crow launched itself into the air, and she saluted as it swooped away. “See you tomorrow. I’ll find you guys something extra shiny.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Many thanks to Julianne and Aisling for their encouragement &amp; brainstorming assistance!</p><p>The title is from an English translation of Pablo Neruda's poem "Water."</p></blockquote></div></div>
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